RADIO: THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM

by Peter Tatchell (reprinted from LAUGH MAGAZINE #18, 1998)

It’s probably the most fondly remembered show of the era affectionately known as the golden days of radio. For twenty years, Sunday nights at 7:00pm meant one thing . . . The Jack Benny Program. The antics of Jack and his castmates became must-hear listening for millions of Americans for a generation. Between the years 1934 and 1954 it was the medium’s top rated show three times, and only out of the top five once (and then, only falling to number six).

Jack Benny himself wasn’t that special a comedian. Born Benjamin Kubelsky in Chicago in 1894, his first taste of per-forming came during his stint in the navy during World War 1 when the then violin player was asked to offer a few words of repartee as part of a concert for his fellow sailors.

After the war he worked up a comedy music act and toured the vaudeville circuits throughout the 1920s. He called him-self Ben Benny, until confusion with bandleader Ben Bernie led to him changing his first name to Jack. In January 1927 he wed the former Sadie Marks (who adopted the stage name of Mary Livingstone), in a marriage that would last nearly fifty years.

When the talkies arrived Jack appeared in a handful of shorts (Bright Moments, Songwriters Revue, A Broadway Romeo, Cab Waiting and Taxi Tangle) andoccasional fea­tures (The Hollywood Revue Of 1929, Chasing Rainbows and Medicine Man) where he was usually cast as a debonair wisecracking leading man.

The other burgeoning entertainment medium of the era was radio, and Jack made his debut on the Ed Sullivan broad-cast of May 2 1931. Within a year he’d been signed for his own show (sponsored by Canada Dry ginger ale) which aired over the NBC Blue network twice weekly for six months. He then switched to CBS (with the same sponsor) for a further three months of two programmes a week.

Soon after, Al Jolson deserted his Friday night Chevrolet show on NBC Red and Jack Benny was signed to replace him. Hoping to capture some of the magic of his best friend George Burns’ success with wife Gracie Allen, Jack arranged for Mary Livingstone to become his regular on-air partner from this point on (though she’d first broadcast with him on August 3 1932). It was the first step to the formation of radio’s most successful group.

Though now a popular performer on the airwaves, Jack Benny was still very much in the mould of the many other comedians appearing on radio . . . each broadcast would fea­ture some traditional repartee, orchestral numbers by the resident band and a song by the male vocalist.

By April 1934, Benny had a new sponsor (the General Tire Company) and a new announcer, the rotund Don Wilson. Another player had joined the team, and when the makers of Jell-O began backing the show later that year, The Jack BennyProgramhad a timeslot it would keep for the next twenty-one seasons . . . seven o’clock on Sunday nights. (It should be noted that, at the time, the Benny cast would do two performances of each week’s script three hours apart, so that it would maintain that time in the major cities on both coasts, which were in different time zones. However, when America entered the Second World War, each week’s show was done only once … still airing at 7:00pm in New York, which was 4:00pm on the West coast. Listeners in Los Angeles and San Francisco would continue to hear the programme in this timeslot after the war had ended).

In his first four years on air, Jack’s show had featured no fewer than six orchestras (under the batons of George Olsen, Ted Weems, Frank Black, Don Bestor, Jimmy Grier and Johnny Green) before Phil Harris signed on in October 1936 and the writers were able to create an elbow-bending egotist to regularly antagonise the host.

Being a popular broadcasting name led Jack back to the movies in regular appearances on the big screen (Mr. Broadway, Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round, Broadway Melody Of 1936, It’s In The Air, The Big Broadcast Of 1936, Col­lege Holiday, Artists And Models, This Way, Please andArtists And Models Abroad). In each he appeared in fairlynondescript roles which, in fact, could have been played by any number of other show business names.

The 1930s was a popular time for Hollywood westerns, and Jack’s radio writers decided to send up the genre by having him play a character called Buck Benny on a number of broadcasts. As part of the proceedings, movie favourite Andy Devine became a semi-regular for severalweeks (and in fact made frequent appearances on the show over the following three seasons). The routine even spawned a feature film … Buck Benny Rides Againin 1940.

December 30th 1936 saw the start of radio’s greatest feud when Fred Allen welcomed child violinist Stuart Canin to his programme and threw in a line about how well he played in comparison to that other alleged exponent of the catgut … Jack Benny. In response, Benny fired off some remarks of his own (or, to be more accurate, from the pens of his writers) the following Sunday, and the tit-for-tat routine was off and running. Several months of diatribes led to an appearance at New York’s Hotel Pierre in March 1937 which paved the way for a movie spinoff (Love Thy Neighbor) and nearly twenty years of top-rating radio and tv confrontations.

Returning by train from the New York hijinks, the Benny programme featured black actor Eddie Anderson in a bit part as a porter, and reaction to the character saw him joining the cast full time as Jack’s wisecracking, gravel-voiced manserv­ant Rochester, and acting as sparring partner for Benny for the next quarter of a century. Anderson’s character was also featured in a handful of Benny motion pictures (including Man About Town and The Meanest Man In The World).

Over the years the show had featured several male vocalists (James Melton, Frank Parker and Kenny Baker) but a replacement was needed for the 1939/40 season. The successful candidate was tenor Eugene McNulty, who used the stage name Dennis Day. Day’s fine singing talents were augmented by a zany Gracie Allen-like sense of logic which immediately caught on with the listeners and, after almost a decade of building, the Jack’s ensemble was complete. After several seasons at number 2, in 1940 The Jack Benny Programfinally topped the ratings.

Along the way, the writers had transformed the star from a fairly traditional joke-telling comic into a finely drawn, three-dimensional character who was vain, notoriously penny-pinching, a lousy violinist with a curious walk and the butt of the idiosyncrasies of his supporting players. Benny himself was wise enough to realize the laughs could be spread evenly throughout his team and the show’s success would still sit squarely on his shoulders.

Radio had reached its peak, but the coming of the Second World War brought change to all areas of show business. The Armed Forces Radio Service was set up to make sure the morale of America’s fighting men was enlivened by the popular broad-casting favourites from back home, and stars like Jack Benny appeared on hundreds of specially-scripted programmes which were played in battle zones all round the world. In addition, most of the weekly series were edited (to remove commercial content) for rebroadcast by the A.F.R.S.

The war also affected the Benny show in a more tragic way. In January 1942, the death of Carole Lombard in an air crash (returning to Los Angeles from a war-bond tour) led to Jack cancelling that week’s broadcast . . . the pair had recently starred in the Lubisch comedy To Be Or Not To Be.

In December that year, Phil Harris temporarily left the show to join the service. He returned three months later, at a time when Orson Welles had stepped in to the host’s role for four broadcasts while Benny was ill. In November 1944, Dennis Day also left the series to enlist, with Larry Stevens filling in as the weekly vocalist until Day’s return in March 1946.

After eight incredibly successful seasons touting Jell-O, sponsor General Foods decided to have the Benny team switch to another of its products, Grape Nuts, from October 1942. Two years later Lucky Strike cigarettes took over for a mara­thon run which lasted until the show’s eventual demise over ten years later.

Apart from the half-dozen regulars, The Jack Benny Program also featured several occasional players . . . among themSam Hearn (as Schiepperman) who first appeared in early 1934,Frank Nelson (the antagonistic Yeeeeess man) from June 1934,cartoonland’s immortal Mel Blanc (the voice of violin teacher Professor Le Blanc) a participant since February 1939, and later, Artie Auerbach (Mr. Kitzel) from January 1946 and Frank Fontaine (as the loudmouthed L.C. Sivoney) from April 1950.Vocal group The Sportsmen Quartet also joined the cast from September 1946 to wax lyrical about the sponsor’s wares and irritate the host.

In addition to the annual grudgematch with Fred Allen, in December 1945 Benny began an ongoing antagonism with movie legend Ronald Colman and his wife Benita (who supposedly lived in the house next door). The war of nerves (which resulted in over twenty appearances by the pair over the next six years) had Jack trying to ingratiate himself into their Hol­lywood circle and generally making a pest of himself. Later, the routine was continued in the television version of the show with James Stewart and his wife being the exasperated butt of Benny’s company (though the Colmans guested in one of Jack’s tv editions in November 1956).

By the late 1940s, NBC had come to dominate the airwaves (thanks in no small manner to institutions like the Benny show). In desperation, CBS chief William Paley organized his infa­mous “talent raid” which snared Jack, Amos ‘N’ Andy and Red Skelton. Two million dollars saw CBS buy the entire Jack Benny Program which they scheduled (midway throughthe season) at the regular 7pm Sunday slot from January 2nd 1949. In the process, Benny made a huge tax-free capital gain and Paley got himself a guaranteed ratings winner.

Not merely content to offer a diet of quips and putdowns, the show’s writers were encouraged to expand the boundaries of their craft. The first show of the 1949/50 season is remarkable in scripting a half-hour sitcom where the host doesn’t make an appearance until the final four minutes . . . such was the appeal of a penny-pinching joke about the Benny character that the star agreed to allow the radical idea. Script updates were also permitted during the broadcast with the most fa­mous occurring during the January 8 1950 programme when an accidental name mispronunciation by Don Wilson was cleverly exploited in a later part of the storyline.

The end of the decade saw the emergence of television as the entertainment world’s next big craze and by late 1950 most of the big names had either switched mediums or provided tv offerings in addition to their radio efforts. Jack decided to ease into tv gradually with only an occasional show, and continue on with his weekly broadcasts.(SEE THE laughterlog.com FILE ON JACK’S TV SERIES)

By mid-1952, radio had lost a huge amount of its advertis­ing dollar to the new competitor and budgets had to be cut. In Benny’s case, Phil Harris was replaced by the more economi­cal Bob Crosby and his orchestra (though Phil would return for a tv guest spot in October 1958).

Jack (along with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Edgar Bergen) were the last big names to stay on the airwaves but the writing was on the wall and in a few short years the industry would change to disk-jockeys and wall-to-wall music. The 1954/55 season was the last for The Jack Benny Programand twelveout of the thirty-five broadcasts were repeats of programmes aired a couple of years before.

Its last years saw no lessening of humour or creativity and up to its final edition The Jack Benny Program maintained its reputation as a leading light in the history of American broadcasting, and happily time has not tarnished the delight in listening to the old favourite.

EPISODE GUIDE

Season 1: NBC BLUE Mondays and Wednesdays May 2 to October 26 1932 (52editions)
with Ethel Shutta and George Olsen’s Orchestra
sponsor: Canada Dry Ginger Alerecording of May 2 is with collectors

Old Time Radio Remembers Jack BennyOld Time Radio Memories CD C 5051 (2003)Train TripPhil Harris Replaced By Bing CrosbySuspense! The Face Is Familiarother Jack Benny radio appearances may be found on …

The Horn Blows At MidnightRadiola LP MR 1068 (1977)
features the 60 minute Ford Theatre of March 4 1949

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